


the effect of logic

by Afueras



Category: Bandom, Placebo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:26:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afueras/pseuds/Afueras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything was weird tonight; it was all a dozen shades of wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the effect of logic

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post from... 2011, I think. Maybe 2010.  
> Set in 2004 or so but can apply to any time period

Contrary to popular belief, Brian Molko knew perfectly well that the drink in his hand had been drugged.

The couple who had pushed it on him a few minutes earlier, with an abundance of smiles and kisses, were nowhere to be seen. They had been swallowed by the noisy club almost instantly. When he began to set the drink down, hands had come out of nowhere and pushed it back towards him, showering him in flattery, smothering him with offers to dance.

Stefan had left hours ago with his boyfriend. Steve had opted out of tonight’s activities. Brian was very alone, and feeling it.

People wouldn’t stop touching him. It was like they all knew, every one of them, just how badly he wanted to put down that drink and leave. From the moment it had touched his lips he had tasted it, the drug, and known that something was very wrong. Only a few sips went down his throat, but he was still paranoid that the slight heaviness in his limbs and film over his mind were due to something more than simple intoxication.

A hand ran through the back of his hair and he started, spilling the drink all over his hand and the bar.

“Shit! What the hell do you—”

A woman stood behind him, all gleaming teeth and bleached hair. He flinched, not even caring what she wanted. She was so far from his type, he would rather fuck himself. At this point in the night, that was all he wanted anyway. Just to leave and acquaint himself a little better with his left hand and a joint.

“Hello, Mr. Molko.”

“What do you want?” He didn’t bother asking how she knew him.

“I want you to fuck me in the bathroom.”

“…What did you say?” Brian had experienced an incredible number of very forward proposals of sex in his career, but none quite like this. She had her hands on her hips, in her tight red dress that did not at all do favors for her skin tone, and was staring at him with the expression of a person about to face down an angry bull.

“I said I want you to fuck me in the bathroom. Right now.”

“Um, I’m sorry, but I, uh—”

“No excuses.”

“I… no,” he said, stunned.

“You are an asshole, then, just like everyone says.”

They were both shouting to be heard over the music. Brian’s head pounded and he wanted desperately to put down the stupid drink before he forgot and took a swallow of it, but he knew that another would be pushed into his hand before he could do anything. At least this way he knew.

The girl was still staring aggressively. Brian was far too drunk and tired for this.

“Can we take this outside?” he asked, knowing he was probably making a grave mistake.

She nodded and spun, grabbing his wrist and forcing the both of them through the crowd to the entrance.

The cool air lashed at Brian’s bare arms as they passed through the door. He wished he hadn’t cared about looking hot, in his skintight black women’s shirt, and had just worn a coat. He fumbled for his cigarettes and turned to offer the girl one, but she was gone entirely.

In her place was a cab, with the rear door open, and no one inside that he could see. He crept forward from his place on the pavement, stooping when he reached the car to peer in.

“Get in, mate.” The driver was a short, bald man who sounded like a gruffer, older version of Steve. Somehow, this was what made Brian comply.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you need to be?”

Brian thought for a long while, watching the lights go past through the streaky glass window, marveling at the city night. “I don’t know.”

The driver didn’t respond, just continued moving, soft pop music playing through the speakers. Brian had never liked these songs, but somehow they were a comfort now.

He was tired, bone-tired. The tour was long. All of the tours had been long, and they would all be long in the future. He loved Stefan and Steve, and he loved music, but with every album there was less and less to write about. There were no people in his life, no relationships to go right or go wrong. No strung-together days of sex and drugs. Nothing interesting.

The thing that Brian Molko feared most was inexistence. Not the prospect of never having been born, but that of fading away, of becoming an inconsequential piece of nothing like so many of his peers already had.

Rain began to patter against the windshield and roof of the cab. The driver flicked on the wipers, and they moved back and forth with low-pitched squeaks.

He thought back to the club. The couple who gave him the laced drink. Was it really laced, or was all of it in his head? How would he know the taste of whatever drug they might have theoretically used? And the girl at the bar, who had given him a proposition before she even gave her name, and then dragged him outside only to call him a cab and disappear. He couldn’t even recall her face.

Everything was weird tonight; it was all a dozen shades of wrong. He wanted to go home, but he didn’t. That cold, empty flat wasn’t home. The tour bus was. The hotels were. The recording studio and the soundchecks and backstage at venues and dingy vans and rushing people and loud noise – all of them were home, but not this place. Not now.

It was all a paradox. Without time away from Placebo, there would be nothing to write about – but he didn’t want to write if it meant time away from Placebo.

Sighing, he finally gave the driver an address near his. He didn’t know why he didn’t just tell the man his own; he didn’t even feel like getting out of the car, much less walking a few blocks. It was just a practice, put in place to keep his shags from following him home, if possible.

When the cab pulled to a stop at the curb, Brian was reluctant to get out. The glass of the window was cold against his forehead.

“You want to talk about it?” the driver’s voice was sympathetic.

“Do I… what? Um, no, thanks.”

Sympathetic was not a word Brian would ever have used to describe a cab driver, in the past. Maybe he was drunker than he thought. He just wanted to sleep, and forget this night.

Carelessly the man cast a handful of bills toward the front and got out, stretching, feeling the rain pelt his aching muscles. All of the buildings around housed hundreds, or thousands, of people, he marveled vaguely. There were people behind each of these windows.

He walked slowly down the pavement after the cab had gone. He felt like a few fuses had blown in his mind.

Staggering to the curb, Brian threw up in the vague direction of a drain. He hadn’t even realized his stomach was upset. How charming.

He made his way to his building. Up the stairs. To his door. The lock baffled him for a few moments, but he finally succeeded and managed to stumble through to his living room, flinging the deadbolt shut behind him. The singer stopped dead.

A man was on his sofa.

The man was channel-surfing, remote in hand, with his muddy boots propped on Brian’s coffee table. Brian gaped helplessly.

“Hello,” the man said cheerfully, turning off the television and standing up. He tugged his sweater into place. Brian backed away quickly.

“It’s okay, I’m not here to hurt you. I was just leaving, actually.” He gave a bright smile and breezed past, out the door Brian was positive he had just locked.

“No,” the singer whispered. “This can’t be happening. It really can’t.”

Numb and beyond confused, he moved through his flat to the bedroom, where he exited to the balcony.

The wind whipped cold rain against his skin. It made him feel more sober than ever, which helped nothing. His brain was fried. There was whiskey on his breath. Why whiskey? He didn’t even like whiskey.

Some things, logic just couldn’t explain.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't re-post my old stuff because most of it is... pointless, I guess. It doesn't hold meaning to me. This one, though, I just thought was neat, if not particularly good. It was a bit of an experiment. I was prescribed a heavy dose of Percocet, and decided I would sit down to write about nothing in particular as it was kicking in. At the time, I was positive that this story was 100% coherent.


End file.
